How did a convicted terrorist end up attending events in India alongside Canada’s prime minister, his wife and senior government officials?

Turns out it was a series of screw-ups akin to the Keystone Cops.

One that could have been solved with this new technology called Google.

A report issued by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, a multi-party committee of MPs and Senators, lays out what happened on Justin Trudeau’s disastrous trip to India.

It ain’t pretty.

The one thing we can’t say for sure is whether the committee confirmed claims by Trudeau’s then national security advisor Daniel Jean that this entire mess, a convicted terrorist being invited to rub elbows with the PM at a State dinner, was the work of rogue elements within the Indian government out to embarrass Trudeau.

All findings on foreign influence have been redacted from the public version of the report.

The committee had six distinct findings on the issue of foreign interference on the PM’s trip, all of them have been removed citing national security concerns.

Luckily, there is enough in the rest of the document to call BS on the claim that Jaspal Atwal, a convicted terrorist from Canada, showed up at an event in India so the Indian government could embarrass Trudeau.

Atwal was convicted in the 1986 attempted murder of Malkiat Singh Sidhu.

Sidhu, a government minister from India’s Punjab region, was visiting Canada for the wedding of a relative when Atwal and a group of accomplices shot Sidhu and left him for dead.

The attempted assassination was part of a push for a separate Sikh homeland to be carved out of India.

Atwal served five years of a 20-year sentence even though he was described by the judge in the case as a terrorist.

So how did a man with this record get invited to an event in India with our prime minister? On a trip where the Indian government had already voiced concern about Sikh separatist leanings of some in the Canadian government?

He asked.

Liberal MP for Surrey Centre Randeep Sarai forwarded Atwal’s name to the PMO ahead of the trip.

“All we did is forwarded anybody that wanted to attend,” Sarai told local media last March.

A photo is making the rounds of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s wife, Sophie Gregoire, at a function in India in recent days where she was snapped next to Jaspal Atwal, a Surrey businessman, who is a one-time member of the now-banned International Sikh Youth Federation with a conviction for a 1986 terror-related shooting in B.C. Atwal was also invited to dinner with the prime minister by Canada’s High Commission in Delhi.Handout /
PNG

Apparently without vetting the names, the PMO added Atwal and hundreds of others to a guest list.

“On February 10, PMO added an additional 423 names to the list of invitees,” the newly issued report states.

He should have been flagged as problematic but wasn’t.

After escaping the lack of vetting by PMO staffers, Atwal was flagged by the RCMP E Division in British Columbia.

This was on February 13, the same day the PM’s national security advisor was in India to discuss … well, security, and the same day there was a briefing within the government on Sikh extremism.

None of that raised flags about Atwal.

Instead, an RCMP official looking at the list and checking it against criminal databases flagged Atwal’s name.

“That information caused RCMP personnel to search criminal databases, revealing information that should have triggered the notification of the Prime Minister’s Protective Detail and the briefing of senior officials,” the report states.

The next day RCMP HQ in Ottawa was informed but did nothing with it.

A week later, after the story of a terrorist being with the PM’s entourage at a politically sensitive event had broken in the media, an RCMP officer charged with looking into this after the fact stated the obvious.

“A name check even on Google would have identified and flagged this individual if the guest list would have been accessible to security,” the officer wrote.

This report was completed by the committee months ago. It was handed to the PMO on May 31.

What changes were made since then, we will never know.

What is clear is that with what has been redacted the Trudeau PMO wants the RCMP to be the fall guys for this.

Surely some of the blame lays with them but since this was more of a political problem than a security one, much of the blame must lay with Trudeau’s office.

The entire India trip was only ever about photo ops to win votes back home in Canada. This redacted report is about making sure Canadians don’t learn the whole truth, lest Trudeau lose votes.

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